


Ambush Along the Reik

by Silverheart



Category: Vermintide, Warhammer Fantasy
Genre: First Meeting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-07 00:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15897585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverheart/pseuds/Silverheart
Summary: How exactly did our motley band of heroes meet? We know why (more or less) they were in Ubersreik, but how did they begin fighting together?





	Ambush Along the Reik

**Author's Note:**

> I played the free weekend of Vermintide II and ended up wanting to write some pieces for it. I found myself wondering how *exactly* our crew came to be and here we are.

"...and so me Cousin Okri, he spat right into his eye! And wouldn’t you know it, the great metal bastard stumbled back as if he’d been stabbed! That gave Okri a chance to slip the chains— he’s double-jointed, is Cousin Okri...”  
  
Sergeant Kruber was listening to the dwarf’s ridiculous tale, though to the the man’s credit, he seemed only to be half listening.  
  
Like Victor Saltzpyre and the rest of the absurd passengers of the carriage into Ubersreik, he probably felt it, too, the dread, the wrongness. The Witch Hunter glanced towards the dwarf as he rambled and noticed the way he kept his axe haft near at hand. Perhaps this Bardin Goreksson was not such a fool as he seemed. Perhaps he felt it, too.  
  
Moving the prisoner, one Sienna Fuegonasus, had been slower than it should have been, though not because of the fugitive Bright Wizard herself. The countryside should have been relatively calm, but several bandit attacks had stalled them. More of them than there should have been. Something was amiss in the Reikland.  
  
Amiss enough that the carriage Saltzpyre, his guard Kruber, and his prisoner had taken into the city was also occupied by a dwarf and an elf, the strangest set of companions he had yet endured.  
  
The clouds above drifted aside and the sickly light of Morrslieb shone down in full. The dwarf fell silent in the middle of his story. The horses continued at a trot for a moment, then either the driver goaded them into the gallop or the vague threat of the night spooked them into one.  
  
Saltzpyre looked at his prisoner, seated between himself and Kruber. She was staring into the distance, frowning. “Something is...stirring,” she muttered, “Something very bad.”  
  
“Aye,” the elf said, the first thing she’d said at all, “I feel it too.”  
  
The carriage continued to thunder through the streets, headed towards the City Center.  
  
The driver shouted suddenly, loudly, and pulled them to a swift stop, jerking all the passengers inside violently. Saltzpyre glared in the direction of the driver. “I’ve got it, sir,” Kruber said, opening the carriage door.  
  
“I’m coming with you.” Mindful of his duty, he pulled the Bright Wizard with him. It did not take much. She was a highly curious creature, one of her many faults.  
  
The driver was wrestling with his reins. “Dead man in the road!” he called down to Kruber, “Sigmar knows why, in this district!”  
  
They turned to see the corpse he was speaking of.  
  
It was a guardsman, from the uniform. A pair of rats was tearing at his face and there were great bloodied gashes in his chest.  
  
Saltzpyre’s dread solidified to something cold and hard in his chest. Kruber crouched over the body, sending the rats scurrying.  
  
He didn’t need to say it because Saltzpyre knew. He turned to his prisoner, pulling a key from his belt, and unlocked her shackles. She rubbed her wrists and frowned at him in confusion.  
  
“A trap!” Kruber called, as experienced as Saltzpyre was in the ways of roadside ambushes.  
  
It was the elf who saw one first. She turned and knocked an arrow at the same time, firing with impossible speed. “Look out!”  
  
It tumbled down from a rooftop, screeching. Saltzpyre’s left eye socket flared for a heartbeat in remembered agony.  
  
A Skaven.  
  
They rushed from the shadows, screaming. Kruber leapt to his feet, sword in hand and charged forward beside the dwarf.  
  
The Witch Hunter shoved the phantom pain aside and began firing. “Die!” he ordered the vermin as they pounced.  
  
The Skaven! Here, now, in Ubersreik!  
  
Sigmar! They must be stopped!  
  
More were coming. He heard rather than saw the one of the Skaven kill the coachman. The hoses screamed and fled, pushed beyond breaking now, dragging the only slight hope of escape with them.  
  
And more Skaven came. They were encircled now. Saltzpyre fired, counting his shots. He would need to draw steel soon.  
  
“Over here!” a blessedly human voice called. Saltzpyre glanced over to see a man gesturing from a nearby alleyway. “Follow me!”  
  
Fuegonasus had grabbed a torch from a nearby sconce and now she called the flame to hand before sending it out to burn down five ratmen as they rushed. “Burn!” she shouted, laughing.  
  
As the flames died, something came rushing through the mist.  
  
A massive, roaring Skaven. It roared at them and began lumbering forward, aging speed rapidly.  
  
Saltzpyre moved to the man in the alleyway, followed by Fuegonasus, the dwarf, and Krueber. The elf had an arrow trained on the monster.  
  
He glanced her way. “Over here! Down this street!”  
  
She loosed the arrow and followed as they ran behind their mysterious guide. The monster’s pained cry echoed behind them, but no one turned to see if it was following.  
  
Their guide knew the streets well, leading them though the dark and mist without glancing back. Saltzpyre lost track of their turns quickly and almost lost the man himself until they took one last turn to find him holding open a door. “Here! Quickly now!”  
  
They rushed through and found themselves in a warm and altogether cozy common room. It was...disorienting.  
  
“Welcome to the Red Moon Inn. I’m it’s proud owner, Franz Lohner.” They all looked to the door, weapons still in hand. “The Skaven will not come knocking here, so sheath your blades.”  
  
“And how are you so sure of that, umgi?” the dwarf asked.  
  
“I’ve got a deal with the local Gray Wizard. All of the city could burn down around us and they still wouldn’t be able to touch us.” He grew grim. “And it just might burn down around us. You’ve chosen a dark day to come to Ubersreik, my friends. The darkest.”  
  
Saltzpyre considered the man and his inn. He holstered his pistols. “How big a raid is it, do you know?”  
  
“Raid?” Lohner gave a bitter, humorless laugh. “This is no raid, Witch Hunter. It’s a damned invasion.”  
  
“An invasion?” Kruber asked. He’d lowered his sword, but not sheathed it. There was a note of panic in his voice. “An invasion of what? Those bloody things?”  
  
“Skaven. The ratmen,” Saltzpyre said, “Commonly dismissed as legend by many.”  
  
“The Skaven, as in the ones the Tileans talk about?”  
  
“The same.”  
  
Kruber fell into dumbfounded silence. He sheathed his sword and sat down in the nearest chair. Nearby, Fuegonasus took another seat, equally shocked.  
  
“So the raki are attacking the surface now,” the dwarf said, setting down his axe, “Dark days for this city, indeed.”  
  
“You can try to leave, if you like, but I doubt you’d get far,” Lohner said, “They’re likely to overrun the whole district before dawn and then some. If I know the ratmen, and Sigmar have mercy on me, I do, they’ve got Ubersreik surrounded.”  
  
“No, no, umgi, I came to this city for a reason and I’ll not be going. Certainly not with raki to fight.” He looked at the ale cask behind the bar. “And with so much drink on hand!”  
  
“What is to be done?” the elf asked, “If it is as you say, then the city is surely lost.”  
  
The innkeeper shook his head. He pulled a sheath of paper from the bar and unrolled it on the dining room table. It was a map of Ubersreik. “Not yet, it isn’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Do you know how many times I watched the Vermintide opening cutscene to write this?! Bear with me if it doesn't quite match up; it's very action-packed and I was trying make the brief narrative also make logical sense.  
> 2) I feel like there's maybe not enough SIGMAR! in this, but I find it's a thin line between what the game pulls off very well and "By Grabthar's hammer, what a savings!" (Sigmar's hammer, okay, geez...)  
> 3)The, uh, unique comraderie that we all know and love has yet to develop at this point.


End file.
